Dante helps a young widower find his way back to the world of the living after his pregnant wife dies. Here's the opening of his New York Times essay:

“In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.”

So begins one of the most celebrated and difficult poems ever written, Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” a more than 14,000-line epic on the soul’s journey through the afterlife. The tension between the pronouns says it all: Although the “I” belongs to Dante, who died in 1321, his journey is also part of “our life.” We will all find ourselves in a dark wood one day, the lines suggest. . . .